Back when I was twenty years old working in radio, I used to write and read the news during the morning show at a radio station in Bakersfield. This meant I got up at 3:30 in the morning every day to shower and get a Starbucks and drag into the station to have the news ready by 6am.
One morning I walked in and our overnight guy had a friend hanging out in the studio. So there at 5 in the morning, I met one of my new best friends without even knowing it.
(sometime in 1999)
Matt was funny. Matt was obsessed with the radio. We liked a lot of the same music. Matt used to call me on the station hotline just to BS with me when I was at work. He lived in Fresno and I lived in Bakersfield. He started randomly showing up just to hang out with me. He was like that, he would just get in the car (like I would) to drive around and listen to other radio stations and would just end up in Bakersfield.
One night he showed up to go to see The Offspring and Lit with me. It wasn’t planned really, my station just happened to have that show happening and he came down on a whim and we went together. After the show he asked to see the club I was DJ-ing at during this time and I took him by and showed him. Afterwards we got fries from Del Taco and I drove him back to the radio station because that’s where we left his car. We ended up sitting on the trunk of my car and talking forever and we kissed.
Matt ended up becoming my “boyfriend,” for awhile. I was 20 years old.
(this nerd…)
We hid it from some people for awhile. He was working at the Fresno stations and I was in Bakersfield and we worked for the same company and we really thought everyone would be pissed off at us or we’d get in trouble. People figured it out really quickly though, since we were always just showing up at each other’s events or studios.
When we weren’t doing that, we would go on ridiculous adventures. I remember one time he drove down to get me in Bakersfield so we could continue to Orange County to see Orgy at some club. We took his ridiculous mini truck. It was slammed to the ground and painted in Miami Dolphins colors. This was particularly hilarious because he was color blind for a long time so he had no idea the truck was that. effin. ugly.
We listened to KROQ and got lost but we made it to the show. When we got back to Bakersfield, he crashed in the guest room at my Grandmas house. This would become a really regular thing for awhile. When I went to Fresno and stayed overnight I would stay at his sister’s apartment.
(one of our radio stations Christmas parties)
But then… Matt took a trip across country in that ridiculous truck. It was a personal journey for him and it’s not my story to tell. When he came home though, he and I broke up because he had decided it was time to start living his truth.
Matt was gay.
And I was one of the first people he told.
And I was pissed and paralyzed thinking I had done something wrong.
He came home and brought me this beautiful crystal bird statue that he picked up along the way and then dumped me over the phone. I seriously didn’t know how to handle it…. for about a day.
Then I thought, this is my best friend, this is a person I love with all of my heart and he loves me, just not the way I thought we loved each other.
Nothing is different.
Even my Grandma was like “How can you be mad if he likes boys? You like boys!” So after a very weird couple of weeks, Matt started showing up in Bakersfield to see me again.
He got a job in Las Vegas and came through Bakersfield to hang out before he moved. When he was trying to leave to Vegas his truck broke down outside of Bakersfield and I had to drive to Tulare to get him while his truck was being repaired. He stayed with my Grandma and I at the Condo we had moved to for about three days. Then it was off to Vegas.
We wrote letters. We called each other. And then one day I got the news that he was coming back to California. And we were going to be working together at the same radio station.
(Matt and I with his former boyfriend and my soon to be BFF Jeff and the Adema guys)
It was tense at first, because we still had weird feelings about each other, but good God we had so much fun working together. We got up to all kinds of trouble together and he ended up moving about 2 blocks from me. He worked the 7-12 shift at the station and I came in at 12. He was often there all night working on commercials or going to get me Del Taco, or just being there because he loved radio. When I’d get off at 6am we would sometimes go to The Mint, this dive bar in Bakersfield that opens at 6 and get bloody marys or screwdrivers and smoke a cigarette together on the back patio. Or we’d go to Carrows and get the 4.95 breakfast. Or we’d go pick up my laundry and go to his house and do my laundry and hang out.
We fought, sure but we always got over it.
We ended up working together in San Luis Obispo for awhile. He was voice tracking (recording shows remotely) from Bakersfield at my station in San Luis Obispo. So the tradition of Matt just dropping in on me continued. He actually came out and drove me to my first big job of wrangling listeners to meet Godsmack in Santa Barbara. In classic Matt fashion when he got to the station he said “Hey let’s take the station’s truck, we won’t get in trouble, trust me.”
I was horrified.
But he was right. Taking the truck made it easier for the listeners to find us and Clear Channel had to buy the gas.
Eventually Matt moved to Texas. In Texas he did all kinds of cool shit, including but not limited to becoming THE MAYOR OF KEMP, TEXAS. No shit. An out Gay Country Radio DJ was the Mayor Kemp Texas. He also racked up some CMA awards (Country Music Association) and did voice and production work for stations all over the country.
In the middle of all of this, he still traveled like crazy. He lived in Oregon for awhile too and during that time, he found time to just randomly drive to Chico to see me while I was living there. He also did work for the band Orgy and their record label D1 Music. If I ever needed something produced because I was at my wits end programming my own radio station or I was just fresh out of ideas, I called Matt. He either had an idea for me or would just do the damn thing and send it to me. That was Matt, if it needed done, he did it. Especially for his friends.
When I was moving back to San Luis Obispo, we talked a lot about if this was a good move for me. And he kept cheering me on.
Matt’s family vacations in SLO pretty often so it wasn’t weird when one day he called me and said “Hey let’s hang out.” He came out with me and my ex husband. He came to see my apartment.
(My apartment in February 2017.)
Matt got sick and was in the hospital later in 2017. I was teasing him over instant messenger that if he didn’t get better I’d kick his ass.
He didn’t get better.
On October 27 2017 I was sitting on the patio at Mc Carthy’s Irish Pub and got a message from my friend Tyson who had introduced Matt and I back in 1999 that Matt had passed away. Tyson called me and I screamed. I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how to process this. Matt was too young. Matt was too amazing.
I don’t talk to God very often but I did in this moment, mainly to say “What The Fuck?”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t okay. It wasn’t even a thing I could process.
But it happened.
Before Matt passed he was really promoting this artist Aaron Watson, who has this song “The Arrow,” that’s all about following your dreams and living your truth. Matt did just that. He followed his truth, he did everything he wanted to do and he tried to help other people do that as well. His sister Joanne got a tattoo of an arrow to remember her brother and I asked her if it was okay for me to do the same. She said yes.
(this is mine, right over my heart)
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about Matt. Every time I look in the mirror this tattoo is there, and I remember that this boy…. this man, would still be cheering me on right now. When my Dad started working in Country Radio after years of being the Rock Guy, I imagined how tickled Matt would have been and how excited he would have been to share his knowledge and experience with my Dad.
When Matt first started in radio he was given the on air name “Shadowboy,” because he basically started the job as a job shadow. He was there to follow people around and learn how the radio worked.
(In the KFRR era)
At the radio stations I used to work at in Bakersfield, one of the control rooms had this spot under the control board that people signed when they did their first shifts or their last shifts. There were some big names scrawled on that board in the KKXX / KRAB studios… and then there was this.
I love you too Matt. Shadowboy. Phat Matt. And I miss you every single day.